AlpacaNation Website Redesign and Brand Reinforcement

Overview

At this point in time, AlpacaNation was a 14 year old alpaca industry giant. In 2000 it was the first ever online website service to the alpaca breeder community. It empowered the farmer with a whole new way of buying and selling alpacas. However, what once was a $1.1 million dollar revenue machine, between 2010-2013 quickly became a quarter to that or less. We were being sliced and diced by our competitors. We claimed majority of the marketshare, but that had sunk to an all-time low in 2013. Yearly ad calendars were no longer pre-filled for the entire year. It seemed as though we were on the way out. We were down to only 10 to 50 page views a day, 300+ per month. Breeders were not active on their account.

Then after claiming new ownership in Oct 2013, we thoughtfully worked to reinforce the brand and deliver on past customer promises of old. We re-architected our IT infrastructure, we played on our new tagline “The Original Online Alpaca Marketplace”, and spruced up our brand identity. Then we meticulously and thoughtfully addressed an old fragile codebase. This included global stylings, various feature enhancements and new landing page. While attending trade shows, when approached by members, we would fix complaints in-person on the fly. This among other acts of service began bringing loyalty back to AlpacaNation.

Finally as we began to collect the data and synthesize it, we were so thrilled! We had pulled up from that 10 to 50 page views a day up to several hundred to a few thousand in a week. The new norm became 48,000+ in a given month and began a nice steady rise. Breeders were reactivating their accounts, buying ads, sending us encouraging feedback and ideas. The phones were ringing again!!!